Chap. II. MENTAL POWERS. 37 



an instinctive dread of serpents, and probably of other 

 dangerous animals. 



The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the 

 instincts in the higher animals are remarkable in con- 

 trast with those of the lower animals. Cuvier main- 

 tained that instinct and intelligence stand in an inverse 

 ratio to each other; and some have thought that the 

 intellectual faculties of the higher animals have been 

 gradually developed from their instincts. But Pouch et, 

 in an interesting essay, 2 has shewn that no such inverse 

 ratio really exists. Those insects which possess the most 

 wonderful instincts are certainly the most intelligent. 

 In the vertebrate series, the least intelligent members, 

 namely fishes and amphibians, do not possess complex 

 instincts ; and amongst mammals the animal most re- 

 markable for its instincts, namely the beaver, is highly 

 intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who has 

 read Mr. Morgan's excellent account of this animal. 3 



Although the first dawnings of intelligence, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Herbert Spencer, 4 have been developed 

 through the multiplication and co-ordination of reflex 

 actions, and although many of the simpler instincts 

 graduate into actions of this kind and can hardly be 

 distinguished from them, as in the case of young animals 

 sucking, yet the more complex instincts seem to have 

 originated independently of intelligence. I am, how- 

 ever, far from wishing to deny that instinctive actions 

 may lose their fixed and untaught character, and be 

 replaced by others performed by the aid of the free will. 

 On the other hand, some intelligent actions — as when 

 birds on oceanic islands first learn to avoid man — after 



2 ' L'Instinct chez les Insectes.' ' Eevue des Deux Mondes,' Feb. 

 1870, p. 690. 



3 ' The American Beaver and his Works,' 1868. 



4 ' The Principles of Psychology/ 2nd edit. 1870, pp. 418-443 



